This is the End 2: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (9 Book Collection)

by J. Thorn

  “I watch Mr. Hyperuniverse. I know.”

  “Seeing it on your projector is one thing. You ever see a roider in person?”

  “Haven’t had the pleasure.”

  “It’s sort of like the cyborg in Terminator 39. But bigger.”

  I glanced at him. “You scared, McGlade?”

  “I don’t get scared.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Before situations get scary, I run away.”

  I didn’t buy it. Not the scared part. The running part. McGlade’s fastest speed was turtle, as evidenced by the way he lingered several steps behind me.

  As we were cutting through an alley someone else approached us. A woman. I looked for hidden bows and arrows, but her tight outfit didn’t give her room to conceal anything. The bodysuit was neon green, made of shiny latex. It matched her hair color, which hung down to her waist. The fact that she wasn’t filthy made her stand out. So did the fact that her body was incredible.

  “Dibs,” McGlade said.

  “I thought you liked natural hair color.”

  “I like anything with two tits and a pulse. And even the two tits are negotiable.”

  She stopped a few feet in front of us. I noticed she was Asian, that her bodysuit extended to stiletto boots, and that it was so tight you could see her nipples.

  “Nice,” McGlade said out of the corner of his mouth. “And proof that God doesn’t exist.”

  “How so?”

  “Because if God really existed, all women would be this hot.”

  He had a point.

  McGlade smacked his lips. “Anime chick. And I bet she’s a BHV.”

  The woman did indeed look like a Japanese cartoon character come to life. But I wasn’t sure about her being a BHV. I would bet this one had better things to do with her time.

  When she spoke, her voice oozed like honey. “Would you gentlemen like to talk about the opportunities available to leave dissytown and becoming upstanding citizens?”

  Son of a bitch. A bleeding heart volunteer. McGlade was right.

  “I’d be happy to sit down with you and discuss it,” McGlade said. “Or lie down.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, lady. We’ve got an appointment.”

  I tried to walk past, but she stepped in front of me. Then she ran her tongue across her upper lip—also painted green—and gave me a stare that would make pudding hard. “I’m Yummi. I work for Operation Second Chance. We recruit dissys and offer them housing and jobs.” She lightly chewed her lower lip, then said, “I can think of several positions you’d be perfect for.”

  “And slots for me to fill?” I asked.

  Yummi nodded.

  “I can fill slots, too,” McGlade said.

  “Aren’t you worried someone in this rough neighborhood will take advantage of a pretty lady like you?” I asked.

  “The only people who take advantage are the ones I allow. The rest…”

  Yummi’s perfect leg shot out, extending to its full length at a 115-degree angle to her body, the sharp tip of her stiletto heel an inch from McGlade’s throat.

  “I just ejaculated,” McGlade said.

  Yummi lowered her leg, keeping her eyes on me. “So what’s your name?”

  “Not interested.”

  She took a quick step toward me, putting her hand directly on my crotch.

  “It doesn’t feel like you’re not interested.”

  “Step on me,” McGlade said. “I’ll give you five hundred duckets if you step on me.”

  I sighed. Another place, another time, this would be amusing. But I had more pressing issues. “Do men ever say no to you, Yummi?”

  She batted her eyelashes. “Not men or women. I have the best dissy recovery record in OSC.”

  “Then I’m proud to be the first.”

  I gave her a polite but firm shove out of my personal space, grabbed McGlade by the collar, and walked past.

  “Are you nuts?” McGlade said. “Do you know how long it’s been since I got some strange without paying for it?”

  “Never?”

  “Yeah. Never. And I—Shit!”

  The same moment McGlade swore, I felt myself flipping over. I landed hard on the asphalt, the breath knocked out of me, hearing the squeak of latex against my cheeks as Yummi’s thighs straddled my face and she sat on my chest, her eyes full of rage.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Scratch that. Her eyes weren’t filled with rage.

  They were filled with lust.

  “No means no,” I said when I caught my breath.

  “No means try harder.”

  With one hand, she ran her thumb across my lips. The other snaked behind her and managed to work itself inside my pants.

  “This is so hot,” McGlade said, staring from a few inches away.

  Her fingers wrapped around me, and Yummi made a sound that was somewhere between a squeal and a gasp.

  “You’re so big,” she said, her voice dropping an octave.

  Now, I’m all for women taking the lead sexually. And I’m open-minded enough to have married an SLP. But even though Vicki had sex with a lot of men (I didn’t want to know how many) I could honestly say I’d never been with another woman since we’d exchanged our vows. Whenever we argued about her profession, Vicki encouraged me to go out and have affairs. But I had an old-fashioned streak in me that always refused, and I limited my sexual escapades to my time with her, and my time alone in the shower.

  That didn’t mean that I didn’t want to take Yummi right then and there. Or that the thing she was doing with her hand wasn’t driving me out of my mind.

  She rubbed her crotch against my chin, and then her body tensed, and shuddered. I’d seen enough women coming to know Yummi just had.

  “Holy shit!” McGlade said. “Women can have orgasms?”

  Her hips moved faster, apparently going for seconds, and I slapped her ass and pushed her up over my head and off of me. I rolled onto all fours—or in my case, all fives—and saw Yummi had assumed a similar position. She crawled around me like a panther ready to pounce.

  “Don’t make me hurt you,” I said.

  “Please,” she breathed. “Hurt me.”

  I tried to back up, and Yummi launched herself at me, surprisingly strong for her size. She managed to slip underneath me, her arms locking around my waist. I tipped onto my side as Yummi’s thighs wrapped around my head and she ground herself against my face. Her moan made my hair curl.

  I looked around for McGlade, hoping for some help. He was standing next to an overflowing Dumpster.

  “McGlade! Put your pants back on or I’ll kick your ass!”

  Yummi came three or four more times, and then she worked my dick out through my fly and took me in her mouth.

  Vicki was amazing at oral sex. Yummi came very close to matching her expertise. I gasped, and a little voice inside my head said this wasn’t cheating. Technically, this was rape.

  As her head bobbed up and down, and she worked her tongue and throat, that little voice became a big, loud voice.

  But good as it physically felt, it didn’t feel good in my heart. Call me a sappy romantic. Call me a fucking idiot.

  But I wasn’t going to be with any woman other than Vicki. I wouldn’t respect myself if I did.

  I tried to hoist Yummi off, but she had a lip-lock on me that couldn’t be broken without the aid of a crowbar. So I went on the offensive.

  Reaching up my left hand, I found the seam where her latex pants began and forced my way inside.

  Yummi screamed around my cock, which felt pretty incredible. I penetrated her with one, then two fingers, while my thumb worked her clit. Yummi released me, sitting straight up like someone had shoved a rod into her spine, making a sound that was so overwhelmingly sexual I should have won some sort of award.

  I increased the speed, thrusting my fingers in and out while slowly easing out from under her. Yummi’s moans became higher and higher pitched, until the only things that could hear her wer
e dogs.

  I changed the tempo, deliberately teasing her, making her follow my fingers as I disentangled our bodies. When I was free and clear, I did a trick Vicki had taught me, a movement with my thumb that made Yummi’s entire body stiffen up.

  She went off like a volcano. I shoved her away and retrieved my hand, leaving her curled up on the ground, twitching and moaning. Then I zipped myself back up and grabbed McGlade.

  “Time to go.”

  “You’re a fucking idiot,” he said.

  “I know. Now let’s go to Rosie’s.”

  “But we can’t leave her like that. Look at her.” McGlade pointed at Yummi. The girl was shuddering, her eyes rolled up in her head and a line of drool dripping down her cheek. “She’s in a sexual frenzy. The poor thing doesn’t even know where she is.”

  “She’ll be fine.” I continued to pull him away.

  “You should let me stay with her. So she doesn’t get hurt.”

  “No.”

  “I just need two minutes to ensure her safety.”

  “No.”

  “One minute. I’ll give you a thousand credits.”

  I put my hands on McGlade’s shoulders and stared at him, hard. “You can come back for her some other time. My life is on the line here, old buddy. We need to get to Rosie’s. This is hugely important. Do you understand?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re going to help me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I let him go, and he went running toward Yummi. I caught him by his hair and wasn’t gentle in dragging him away. He might have cried for a little while, but eventually he manned up and was able to lead us through the decimated town to Rosie’s.

  As we got deeper into dissytown, more people hung out on the streets. Whores and peddlers, sk8terz and zonerz, even a few kids. I wondered if Yummi had tried to recruit them, and hoped she used a less aggressive but more effective approach.

  Rosie’s, it turned out, was a P&P bar. I had no idea where dissys got their pot and pills, but I could smell the weed long before we walked through the front doors.

  There was music, an old guy at an out-of-tune piano growling the blues. The joint was full, around fifty people dope-smoking and pill-popping. Apparently dissytown had no rules against public fornication, because several folks were going at it. Some hetero. Some same sex. Some solo. I tried not to look. My boys were blue, and I had no desire to add to the ache.

  The place had an air of danger about it that I was ashamed to admit I got a charge out of. These scumbags were the reason I became a peace officer. I had an urgent, irrational desire to arrest everybody.

  “What now?” I asked McGlade.

  He ignored me, his nose a few inches away from some girl-on-girl action. I gave him a punch in the arm.

  “What?”

  “Do you have a contact here? Or are we supposed to try to shake down four dozen people?”

  McGlade had taken out his DT and was shooting video. Without looking at me he said, “Guy behind the counter. Name is Lewis. He’s got a mustache.”

  “You want to give me an intro?”

  “Not really. Ladies? Can you do that thingy again? I didn’t have it zoomed in.”

  I left him to his voyeurism and pushed my way through the crowd. The guy behind the counter had a clipped, black mustache, the kind favored by Adolf Hitler. It complemented the swastika tattoo on his head, done in a luminescent ink that blinked red and blue light.

  “You Lewis?”

  “Who the fuck wants to know?”

  “I’m looking for Rocket Corbitz.”

  He folded his arms. “So?”

  I grabbed him by his Hitler ’stache and pulled him up over the top of the bar. “So tell him I want to see him. Please.”

  Though we weren’t technically allowed to use them, at the peace academy we learned there were several compliance points on the human body. Pinching a suspect in the armpit, kidney, balls, or upper lip caused instant pain and total obedience. Lewis made a half-assed attempt to raise a fist, but I squeezed even harder, making his eyes go glassy.

  When I released him, he immediately ran off.

  Some skank came up to me, the scowl on her face making her look like someone was holding a turd under her nose. A large joint burned in the corner of her mouth.

  Apparently dissys abused pot the old-fashioned way.

  “What the fuck’s your problem with Lewis?”

  “I hate Illinois Nazis.”

  “Well, you’re really gonna hate this one.”

  She took a deep drag off the weed and glanced at something high over my shoulder. I turned around.

  It took me a second to realize I was looking at a man, and not a shaved grizzly bear. He had to go seven feet tall, and damn near as wide. All of it was muscle. Freakishly overdeveloped muscle. Every striation, every vein, every tendon was visible through his tan skin. I knew a few bodybuilders, but this guy looked like he ate Mr. Hyperuniverse, along with the four runners-up.

  His biceps had to go forty inches across. His chest was so thick I didn’t know how he could fit through doorways, even sideways. Even his fingers had definition.

  And on the top of his shaved head, blinking red and white, was a glowing swastika tattoo.

  “I’m Rocket,” he said, he voice too low for a human being.

  This guy wasn’t just a roider. He was the King of the Roiders. I could have thrown a saddle on him and won the Kentucky HyperDerby.

  “Hi, buddy,” I said, trying to smile. My bladder felt like a tire with a slow leak. “I just wanted to ask—”

  His massive paw shot out and grabbed my shirt. With seemingly no effort, he lifted me into the air.

  “You! You’re the SMF that killed my aunt Zelda! I saw you on the news!”

  Then he reared back his other hand, his fist bigger than my whole head, and I realized with absolute certainty that I was going to die.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Beat the shit out of him, Rocket,” said the chick with the joint.

  Rocket looked at her, cockeyed. “That’s what I’m doin’, Camilla.”

  I swiped at Camilla’s face, snagging her burning doobie and mashing the hot ash into Rocket’s knuckles. He dropped me and jerked his hand back, and I let loose with a hard left to the roider’s kidney. It was like punching a giant pile of sandbags.

  Rocket threw a roundhouse, much too fast for a guy so big. I managed to pull away from the brunt of it, but he caught the very tip of my chin. The blow spun me, and I dropped to my hands and knees, trying to discern up from down. My eyes gravitated to the counter. In one spring, Rocket leapt on top of it. His combat boots were almost as long as my arm.

  I crawled in the opposite direction, feeling the vibration as he jumped to the floor. Moving as fast as I could, I scurried under a heavy, faux-wood table, and tried to remember where the front door was. From under the table it was tough to judge.

  Several people laughed, and I realized I was the source of their amusement. This wasn’t the first time Rocket had put on a show for them.

  The table suddenly disappeared. It reappeared on the other side of the room, crashing into the wall forty feet away. I stared up and saw Rocket looming over me.

  I twisted onto my back and thrust my foot at the one place I knew he didn’t have muscles, right in the balls. My kick bounced off, harmlessly. Then Rocket raised a size thirty-eight shoe of his own. I could picture my rib cage and pelvis being crushed, and didn’t much care for that picture, so I tucked in my arms and rolled sideways.

  His stomp made the floor shake. After a few revolutions I got on my hands and knees and stood to face him.

  Rocket had a smile on his face, obviously enjoying himself.

  “This is the part where you beg me not to kill you,” he said.

  “Does it help?”

  “No. I’ll kill you anyway.”

  He stepped closer. I stepped aw
ay. I tried to run left. He got in front of me. I feinted right, then left, but he blocked each attempt, gradually boxing me in. It took less than thirty seconds for him to herd me into a corner of the room. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.

  “You gonna beg?” he asked, his expression playful.

  “Please don’t beat me to death.”

  “That’s not very good.”

  “Pretty please, with pink sugar on top.” I didn’t have to fake the cowering at all; my knees were knocking together.

  “I saw what you did with my aunt. Twisted her head around. That’s what I’m gonna do with you. But first I’m gonna do it to your arms and legs.”

  He threw an easy jab. I took it on the shoulder, and it knocked me back into the wall. The impact made my eyes water.

  “I twisted this one guy’s arm around eight times. You know what happened then? It came off. Like a fried chicken leg.”

  Another jab. I brought my arms up to block, and it felt like I’d tried to stop a bus. Rocket was just playing with me, like a deranged child who pulled the wings from butterflies. I was nothing more than a toy for his amusement. Something harmless, to be used and then forgotten about.

  That pissed me off.

  I latched onto the anger, using it to push back some of the fear. Rocket lobbed another jab my way, but this time I sidestepped it, grabbed his shirt, and rammed the top of my head up under his chin.

  The roider staggered back. When he regained his balance, he jammed two giant fingers into his mouth. He pulled something small and bloody out from between his lips, then looked at me, amazed.

  “You knocked out my—”

  I repeated the maneuver, cracking my head against his jaw so hard I saw stars.

  Rocket yelped—probably the first time he’d ever made a sound like that—and then spat two more teeth onto the floor.

  I gave him another swift punt between the legs, got no reaction, and dove past him as he snapped off a haymaker, his fist burying itself in the wall with an explosion of plaster dust.

  Beelining for the exit, I ran right into Lewis and two of his Nazi pals. Lewis had an aluminum bat. I made my fingers stiff, got inside his swing, and poked him in the throat hard enough to break cartilage.